If The
Lord of the Rings is truly a myth, and suggesting that Blindness
is a myth too, what similarities do they have? Are the qualities
of myth merely in the generalities - long lost ages, places with
people that are unknown to us doing extra-ordinary things? As Campbell
defines the origins of myth, “The symbols of mythology are not manufactured,
they cannot be ordered, or permanently suppressed, they are spontaneous
productions of the psyche and each bears the germ of its source.”
By finding similarity between the characters and plot, we find mutual
ground to support the narrative symbology of the myth that is The
Lord of the Rings in its telling, and the myth that is at
the end of Blindness.
Saramago, with the specific tools of his craft, creates a world
barren of symbols and meaning for his characters and readers to
draw on, he does this by leaving certain parts of his canvas blank.
The place where this story takes place is unnamed. This in and of
itself is unusual, as Saramago set so many of his other stories
in Portugal, and Lisbon specifically served as starting point for
nearly all of the Saramago novels I read. The
History of the Siege of Lisbon, The
Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, and The
Stone Raft all feature Portugal and Lisbon to a greater
or lesser extent. However, by intentionally removing the specificity
of “the where”, we are left to imagine that the events of Blindness
could happen anywhere. The streets and buildings in the
book smack of Europe, but do not suggest much else, much as Tolkien
defined Middle-Earth the idyllic English countryside he knew in
childhood, AKA the Shire. But by removing the inhabitants and replacing
them with hobbits he refused to be pegged down on it being any one
place, rather than an amalgamation of ideal places he conceived
or experienced. The forests inhabited by the elves also lean toward
the boreal fantasy of England and northern Europe. Rivendell or
Lorien is the pinnacle of these Avalon-like places where no one
grows old, and those that are wounded are healed. Due to the dreary
darkness and utter ruin of the circumstances of the story, Blindness
most closely resembles the dark lands of Mordor, where nothing grows
and everything is covered in filth. It did not strike me at first,
but upon a second reading, the unnamed city that the unnamed characters
stumble through blindly reminds me most specifically of the last
march on Mordor. In Mordor and the unnamed city there is no food,
no water, but instead only dust and waste.
The evil minions of Sauron, the
unseen Dark Lord, beset Sam and Frodo on all sides. Orcs, Nazgul,
and Shelob darken every step the hobbits make towards the Cracks
of Doom. Blindness
gathers the unnamed characters together much in the same way
Fellowship
does, by necessity and chance rather than deliberate choice of the
best and brightest. The Doctor’s wife, the Doctor, the Girl with
the Dark Glasses, the Old Man, the Boy with the Squint, and the
Thief are then trapped in quarantine within the abandoned asylum.
Inside these walls they are overrun by every evil that humans are
capable of. On the outside, the building is guarded by the ever-present
military. The army gives little hope for salvation, shelling out
meager food and potable water, and the dictum that they must bury
their dead without ceremony. Tolkien’s Mordor is perforated with
the description of the landscape and its bleak hopelessness, and
utter despair under the rule of Sauron and his minions.
In many myths, one character
is set apart from the rest to bear a burden for the others. In The
Lord of the Rings, the unwilling Frodo steps forward to
carry the One Ring, forward into Mordor to cast it into the Cracks
of Doom and thereby unmake it and destroy Sauron. This burden is
a heavy one for Frodo, who has never been outside of the Shire and
is just beginning to understand the wide world and the beauty and
evil it holds. Yet he goes forth willingly to fulfill his part in
the epic or die trying. Saramago’s characters typically tend towards
timid male copy editors, civil servant, or doctors, but Blindness
puts a woman forward to carry the story, the ophthalmologist's wife,
or "The Doctor's Wife." The Doctor’s Wife holds a position
in Blindness
similar to Frodo’s in TLotR;
she is forced to bear the burden of sight while all others are blind.
When her husband first went blind, she did not, but pretended to
be blind in order to be with him. She intended to see the blindness
through to the end, much in the same way Frodo couldn’t be rid of
Sam Gamgee at any turn. And so she must bear witness to the inside
of the asylum where they are quarantined. She apart from all others
must see the death, the filth, the utter depravation and descent
into hell they endure, for she cannot have the mercy of blindness.
She must see for all the others, helping them to the toilet, to
food, and salvation from the miscreants they are interned with.
Finally, it is not her sight, but mercy on the blind that delivers
them from doom and allows the epidemic to pass.
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